Ashiqur Rahman’s conviction upheld in baby’s death

Ashiqur Rahman waits for a court appearance in 2012 at Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax. Rahman has lost his bid to have his manslaughter conviction overturned in the death of his infant daughter. (ERIC WYNNE / Staff)

A man serving a six-year sentence in the death of his infant daughter has lost his bid to have his conviction overturned.

In a decision released Monday, Justice David Farrar dismissed Ashiqur Rahman’s appeal of his convictions for manslaughter and aggravated assault in the death of his seven-week-old daughter Aurora Breakthrough.

In the appeal, Rahman argued that the trial judge had misunderstood the evidence, erred in finding the evidence of the baby’s mother Jane Gomes credible and made a mistake by convicting Rahman of manslaughter when the evidence raised reasonable doubt.

Aurora was born on June 6, 2009. She died on July 27, 2009, in the IWK Health Centre.

Gomes received a conditional sentence in 2010 for failing to provide the necessities of life to the baby. She pleaded guilty to the charge, which had been downgraded from manslaughter.

Rahman, now 28, was convicted in June 2012.

In the decision, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal judge agreed with Rahman that the trial judge made a mistake in concluding that fractures to Aurora’s limbs had occurred during a July 15 incident, when a doctor’s evidence was that those injuries had happened sometime earlier.

But that mistake was not enough for Rahman to win an appeal.

“The finding that the incident on July 15, 2009, caused the injuries to Aurora’s legs is not material or essential to the final verdicts,” Farrar wrote.

He also found that Rahman was convicted on the totality of evidence and not just on Gomes’s version of events.

“I am not even remotely persuaded that the trial judge committed any error in assessing the credibility of Ms. Gomes,” Farrar wrote.

The judge also rejected Rahman’s argument that Aurora died from a heart defect.

Farrar recounted doctors’ evidence at trial that her symptoms were inconsistent with sudden death from a heart defect and that her death resulted from brain injuries.

In February, Rahman also lost a bid to get paroled.

According to documents released by the Parole Board of Canada, he is not considered a high risk to reoffend. But since his incarceration, he is said to have made little headway accepting blame in his baby’s death or addressing his “contributing deficiencies.”